Juliana Machado Ferreira: The Stolen Birds of Brazil

Juliana Machado Ferreira: The Stolen Birds of Brazil

Every year, poachers remove 38 million animals from natural habitats in Brazil to supply the illegal wildlife trade. Conservation biologist and National Geographic Explorer Juliana Machado Ferreira is fighting back against this devastating trade through science, politics, and education.

The National Geographic Live series brings thought-provoking presentations by today’s leading explorers, scientists, photographers, and performing artists right to you. Each presentation is filmed in front of a live audience at National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C. New clips air every Monday.

Juliana: Today I would like to invite you on a journey to show you not judgmentally, but why we shouldn't keep wild animals from wild species as pets. Wildlife trafficking globally encompasses many ways of exploiting wildlife as it was very well shown here. From the production of souvenirs to the creation in food items, luck, religious charms, fashion accessories. Substances to supply the drug industry or cosmetic industry. Rare animals to supply the international pet trade for collectors and zoos, and the illegal wild pet trade.

Brazilians have a strong connection to nature. And as such, they love to have wild animals with them in their houses as an accepted cultural trait. Throughout my country, from urban centers to the most remote rural areas, the bucolic site of a house displaying cages without wild animals is very common. House owners display their cages with pride as they show their love and admiration for nature and the animals. They usually buy these animals from normal street markets. They have no idea about the relationship with buying their dear animals with the poaching and wildlife trafficking.

As a good Brazilian myself, I too have a strong connection to nature. Since my early years, I learned from my parents a deep love, respect, and admiration for all living things. I still miss my pet hen today. I began learning about wildlife trafficking in Brazil when I met the organization SOS Fauna and their work. I could not get over the ridiculous volume of animals being illegally collected, transported, sold, and kept just so that some people could have their wild pets. As a good example, as you see here, this cargo was in just one truck and it was carrying more than 4,000 poached animals to supply the pet trade. I had to do something. I just could not go home and put my head to rest on the pillow at night. I started volunteering for the organization.

We don't have one estimate from the government and numbers are very hard to come by but let's try to make the picture a little bit clearer. From 2002 to 2009, federal triage facilities received from collections, deliveries, and seizures more than 307,000 animals altogether with a mean of 38,000 per year. However, these numbers may be even bigger as just the state of São Paulo alone in 2006 seized more than 30,000 animals.

Also, trying to use scientific methodology to try to estimate these numbers, two researches from Brazil analyzed eight street markets. They concluded that these markets alone could be illegally trading per year more than 50,000 poached birds valued at 630,000 dollars per year. If we remember that Brazil has over 5,000 cities and each one has at least one of those markets, then we start to be able to grasp about the volume that we are talking about. Withdrawing numerous animals from a couple of species from nature on a regular basis has many consequences. The most obvious is the lack of animal welfare. These creatures endure so much suffering through violent collection and transportation methods and then endure a lifetime captivity without social interaction or exercise. Most times in places which are humid, hot, and without adequate food sources. But there are more profound consequences.

I am risking a little bit of an oversimplification here, but let's try to understand what happens to the environment when you take animals and species that have unique ecological roles. Types of plants growing in the ecosystem will be altered if seed predation rates change. Also, if trees depend on a specific species to disperse their seeds, they will have reduced dispersal capacity. Also, the ecosystem will have decreased regeneration ability. If predators are missing, prey species may experience explosion in populations which can even become pest to our agriculture. On the other hand, when prey species are missing, predators may experience decrease in their population sizes which can effect all connected species. Lastly, when less individuals are left to reproduce, this can lead to more genetically similar populations which in extreme cases can even contribute to the populations or the species extinction. Some people, among them some researchers who I respect very much, have proposed that we do commercial captive breeding of wild species in order to supply demand without exploiting nature. This obviously has many advantages. Yes, in theory it could supply demand for wild animals as pets. We could learn and acquire precious knowledge on how to maintain the species in captivity which could be used in future conservation efforts. You could create an industry with lots of jobs. However, there are disadvantages. Keeping wild animals in captivity is per se a source of suffering. Also, being in a relevant business could also bring about many political interests and this would probably shape our ultimate goal of conserving wild species.

Lastly, when we do captive breeding of wild animals with commercial purposes, it becomes very difficult to promote effective control and law enforcement of this activity, making it very easy and profitable to make poached animals look like they were bred in captivity, what we call bird laundering. There is an even worse problem. Honest breeders invest great deals of time, money and resources to obtain a limited number of animals. For example, a captive bred Blue-Fronted Amazon can cost around 1,000 US dollars in Brazil. Whereas a poached animal from nature will cost 40 dollars or less. There are way fewer people willing to pay so much more. What happens is the bigger consumer market will not buy the most expensive animal. These animals with very different origins and very different prices will supply very different consumer markets. In my opinion commercial captive breeding of wild species will not-- has not the ability to supply the big demand.

Another problem, and then we start to the solutions. When animals which were illegally traded or kept are seized, they have to go through a very complicated rehabilitation process. And absolutely can not be released anywhere or we will cause more bad impacts than good ones. We have to make sure they are healthy. We have to make sure they exhibit wild behaviors. We have to make sure that the place where we are releasing them is safe. We don't want them to be recollected and back on the black market. But it has to be able to maintain the new individuals as well as the natural populations. They have to be released in the same biome they were collected in for adaptive reasons. Depending on the existence of different genetic populations within each species, they must be released as close as possible to their true population of origin or we can cause a severe decrease in the offspring's adaptive potential, following mating with the local population.

I was fortunate enough to find mentors that fully supported my ideas. After so many no's and you are crazy's we decided to-- I just had to do more. We decided that together we would develop my PhD research in population genetics of some wild birds that are severely exploited in Brazil for the wild pet trade. So thank you guys. I would just show you a couple of my results among all the piles of data that we generated. Meet the Red-Cowled Cardinal. And the Green-Winged Saltator. They are very appreciated for their beauty and their songs. I decided to study the species to see if we could find different genetic populations within each one and see the level of threat or if we could pinpoint the origin of animals within a known origin. Ironically enough, we found a different population in the species we did not expect to find. But we did not find them in the species we expected to find them. It changed a little bit the way we saw this species. This has complicated implications. Broadly it means that releasing the Saltators back in the wild should be less problematic concerning the genetics criterion I just mentioned than releasing the Red-Cowled Cardinals. Here are the three populations of cardinals that we were able to describe. We would you like to know if we could infer the most likely origin of some animals seized in São Paulo. These tests still need to be refined but they indicate that these animals are probably most likely from a population in Northeast that is known to be a collection hot spot. Data like this alone will not provide a final answer but along with other sources of information may provide a good indication and a good help for the decision-making process not only for prevention efforts but for releasing in a technically responsible way.

Towards the end of my PhD, I wanted to do everything but writing the thesis to much the despair of my advisors. I was still not happy because I felt my work was really localized and still small. I went on and along with Freeland Foundation from southeast Asia, I started Freeland Brasil. Trying to organize the work I was doing and broaden the impact so we work now with three pillars trying to accomplish a comprehensive set of actions against wildlife trafficking in Brazil. The first one, education and awareness. Amazing. The brink of our civilization, but a little bit too long term for us. In this component, among other projects, we are co-producing a feature documentary on wild animal trafficking in Brazil.

Voiceover: (translated) I believe animals bring joy to us, the joy of singing in its cage. Voiceover: ( translated ) You are responsible for all that you captivate, not for that which you imprison. That which you imprison, you're more than responsible, you're the overseer.

Juliana: This should launch beginning of next year. Also, that was not enough yet so off we went to launch research and mitigation of impacts. Where a student is analyzing the mitochondrial DNA of the Saltators to see if my results can be corroborated. I hope to start my post-PhD next semester developing paternity tests which will be able to be used in commercial bird breeders to help law enforcement detect poached animals. We also collaborate in responsible releases such as this done by the organization SOS Fauna in which 80 Blue-Fronted Amazons were returned to nature following most of all those criteria I just showed you. This was only a couple of years ago. That's me almost crying behind the camera. If you are asking yourself how well that went, how about this? And this? But that was not enough! See, not enough!

So, off we went to capacity enhancement and articulation where we work with agents involved in combating wildlife trafficking and provide training, courses, and workshops. The next ones aligned is one with the prosecutor's office from São Paulo where they rely on international prosecutor's task force against wildlife trafficking in Brazil. We will bring South American prosecutors to develop international agreements on how we can better cooperate against wildlife trafficking regionally and how we can join the global efforts. We also have an aligned workshop with the Brazilian federal police on wildlife forensics and best practices. Lastly, we are producing with SOS Fauna post-seizure procedure guides on how to radically decrease the death rate post after the animals are seized by law enforcement by taking very simple and cheap measures like this animal likes cold and this animal hates heat, etc. But that's not enough!

My next goal is to get involved with efforts to change the Brazilian environmental legislation and try to encompass wildlife trafficking as a full crime because believe it or not, it doesn't. If your country's legislation is anything like ours, tell your law makers you want to change it and encompass wildlife trafficking as a full crime as it is a crime against humanity. These animals are being withdrawn from the environment on a regular basis to be people's pets. Should we maintain the so-called cultural habit just because we are used to it? If commercial captive breeding of wild animals makes law enforcement and protecting our biodiversity more difficult, should we do this just so that some people can fulfill their desire of owning a wild animal? If we fail, consequences may be severe and even not fixable. Cultures are dynamic and can and must evolve. So I'd say no! These animals in all endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful should be out in a healthy and dynamic environment fulfilling their ecological roles and their evolutionary roles as species that evolve over time. Thank you.

Juliana Machado Ferreira: The Stolen Birds of Brazil

Every year, poachers remove 38 million animals from natural habitats in Brazil to supply the illegal wildlife trade. Conservation biologist and National Geographic Explorer Juliana Machado Ferreira is fighting back against this devastating trade through science, politics, and education.

The National Geographic Live series brings thought-provoking presentations by today’s leading explorers, scientists, photographers, and performing artists right to you. Each presentation is filmed in front of a live audience at National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C. New clips air every Monday.